More
by Libek
Summary: At a young age, Balthier decided that he would never make another woman cry. The easiest way to accomplish this just happened to be never letting another one mean anything to him. Not so easy, as it turns out.


At age fifteen, he already knew what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. Naturally, being fifteen, this bore precious little resemblance to the things his father wanted for him -- unrelated to title, or status, or prestige; nothing to do with becoming a Judge. Nor had it any connection to pirating or airships, whatever his later fondness for them.

Again, he was fifteen at the time. And at the time, this passion consumed all others.

Namely, his intention was to earn a kiss from every girl in Archades.

It was a resolution made after his first grand love affair -- after his first grand tragedy -- when he realized, in the focused, narcissistic, selfless way that only a fifteen-year-old can realize anything, that in the end he had only made his girl _unhappy_. And surely life, being life, was much too short for anything so unpleasant as that. It was only right -- only proper -- to avoid this error in the future.

In the future, Ffamran decided, he would only make girls happy.

And he knew that he could make them happy; he was charming, terribly charming, and handsome in a rakish way his father disapproved of, and if he took a girl's hand in his, and brushed his lips delicately over the back of it, then he could make her feel like the most beautiful creature in all the world. And as long as that was all he did, as long as he slipped away afterwards and never saw her again, never led her on or made her believe there was something like a grand love affair between them, why -- he would never, never make her unhappy.

Well, the years passed, and as they passed he matured, and as he matured everything changed. Inconsequential things, such as his name and his line of work and his relationship with the man who still claimed to be his father; and other, more important things, like his tastes ("girls" were largely replaced by "ladies") and the scope of his ambitions. If anything, grand love affairs were only more distasteful to him now, but the world has a way of growing smaller as you age, and Archades was no longer enough for him. There were, you see, too many women beyond its borders.

Naturally, his course was clear: he would simply have to become a sky pirate, so that he could travel Ivalice more freely, and earn a kiss (or more; more was now acceptable as well) from every lovely lady in the world.

There was only one problem -- one very small complication -- and that was that a sky pirate, even a part-time one, needed a partner. Someone to help him fly his ship, and keep it operational, and count the treasure at day's end.

And from that complication, all others sprung, so quickly and shockingly that Balthier (as he called himself now) was quite as taken aback as he would have been to leave a barren field one night and find The Wood in its place come morning.

She was the third one he met that night, in some crowded nameless bar, and her every simple movement had been extraordinary -- for none of them were truly simple. She came towards him like smoke, untouchable, unearthly, her body bared in places that would have made those long-ago girls blush. He had thought then that she didn't notice the way men stared; later he would come to realize they were simply beneath her, irrelevant on so deep a level that, for her, such men did not even _exist_ to stare.

Before she ever reached his table, he had known he was in trouble. His eyes were fixed on her in a way that they had never yet fixed on any girl or lady, and he felt overwarm as if she were already pressed to him in a line of curved flesh, as if she were already kissing him and stroking his skin intimately with the talons she called fingernails. When she proved to have the best qualifications, able to repair even the considerable damage his ship had suffered during its, ah, liberation -- briskly intelligent as she was beautiful, and entirely what he needed in the professional sense, so that the businessman in him could not rationalize turning her away -- then, Balthier knew that his ambitions, his entire resolution, were on very shaky ground indeed.

Fran, as she introduced herself, would never have intended to complicate his life. She stood idly by as he kissed his first Dalmascan, obviously unperturbed, giving them privacy only when the lady clearly wished it -- and afterwards said nothing. Even when he could bear it no longer and kissed _her_ daringly, quick but sensual on the nape of her neck when they were meant to be suiting up together, Fran only turned to gaze measuringly at him and said, "All right, then."

She parted her legs for him freely, never sought promises, never asked about the other ladies, and hardly seemed to notice when he moved on to kiss another. What they had shared, in that moment, was enough for her.

Unfortunately, that he tasted her on the next lady's lips, felt her dark skin beneath his hands when he caressed the one after -- that he dreamed of her, searched the air for her scent when they were together, and found his eyes still drawn to her generous form -- seemed to indicate that it had not been quite enough for him.

Girls like Penelo were innocent flowers, and the way that she averted her eyes when he tucked the handkerchief into her hands was faintly sweet, fresh and barely there. Ladies like Ashe were regal and certain of themselves and her irritation when he as yet managed to make her blush was both satisfying and rather endearing, in its own way. But though Fran would not have minded, and though other females were each still as distantly lovely to him as they had always been, none quite held his attention long enough for him to even attempt a proper seduction.

He had found a woman, you see, and she had spoiled him for all the girls and all the ladies in Ivalice.

So it came to pass one night that he crept back into her bed, thinking he might for once surprise her. Fran had expected the first kiss, the first tryst, but she would never imagine he would come back, because _he_ could never have imagined it.

But Fran only opened lazy eyes, curled her lips, and said, much more softly this time, "All right, then."

At age twenty-two, Balthier was far, far less certain about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. Naturally, being twenty-two, this really should have been of some concern to him. But he knew what he wanted to do with today, and tomorrow, and the day after that -- and surely, in a world as uncertain as this one -- life being life -- that was already quite enough to be getting on with.


End file.
